Wednesday 5th April 2023

Today was a travelling day about 400km from Baseida, Picos de Europa, to Bustarviego, just north of Madrid. Travelled a long way before we found a coffee stop, most unlike us not to have coffee before midday. We made up for it by having cake as well. We had chosen our stopping place, but we were actually spoilt for choice. Every village we passed had an enormous church and a lot of them had their own castle, but we had chosen Coca so Coca it was.

What an excellent choice. The castle was stunning, we’ve never seen one like that before, and believe us we’ve seen a few. It had an extremely deep moat, no water though, in fact we couldn’t work out if it did have any where they got it from. Unfortunately it was siesta time so we couldn’t go in for a look inside.

We wandered through the towns arboretum which had some very fine wood carvings. Too many to show them all. The wandering led us onto the towns monument trail. Guess what? We found an irresistible, climb able, tall tower. 160 metal, see through, steps to the top and through a little door out onto the top of the tower. Wow what a view. Just round the corner was the towns big church overlooking a lovely old bandstand.

After a quick scoot up the ruined walls we were on our way again. 2 hours later we arrived in Bustarviego. Not quite what we were expecting but a lovely apartment. Just have to work out the busses into Madrid now.